The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!

Stolen Innocence
by Rie Sheridan Rose
Beside a lonely country road,
a pristine bicycle stands alone.
The paint is pure as driven snow,
a bike a girl’d be proud to own…
.
A wire basket on the bars
filled with flowers newly picked
seems to say she’ll be right back,
before the clock has further ticked.
.
And yet the child who owned the bike
has been forgotten by her peers.
The flowers wither, wilt and die…
to be replaced for all these years.
.
Her parents never got a grave
where they could go to sit and weep.
She was there, and then was gone—
gone where, a secret shadows keep.
.
I sometimes drive by in my car,
and change the flowers resting there…
Remembering the night she died,
the victim of a childhood dare.
.
Fiction © Copyright Rie Sheridan Rose
Image courtesy of Pixabay.com
More from Author Rie Sheridan Rose:

Overheard in Hell:
Dark Poetry
Poems exploring hell and damnation. Tales of sorrow, vengeance, betrayal, and redemption. Ghosts, ghouls, and demons stalk these pages. Don’t read in a lonely house…in a darkened room by a single candle…
…unless you like the touch of an icy finger up your spine.
![]()












A poignant story.
What a great poem – the rhyme and metre feel so natural – a perfect medium for telling a story that’s so innocent on the surface and such a darkness beneath,